There's some large redevelopment underway all around that bridge, on both banks if I'm not mistaking. This lately posted on the French forum caught my attention for example.

Quote:

Brazza Nord Bordeaux Masterplan / KCAP

[...] The project site is a 67 ha area within Bastide Brazza Nord, a 120 ha former industrial area between the river Garonne and an abandoned railway area. The urban strategy will combine new urban mixed-use functions with re-used abandoned infrastructures and is based on an integrated environmental approach to ground pollution and flood risk. [...]

The program consists of about 600.000 m2 of housing, offices, industrial and public facilities and new public spaces to be implemented on the old industrial riverbank and the abandoned railway area. In the end of 2012 a new bridge – ‘Bacalan Bastide’ – will connect the right and left bank of the Garonne river. This connection will improve the relation of Brazza Nord and the rest of the city. It is considered as a key opportunity for the regeneration of the surrounding communities and will have an important impact on the entire region.

A long-run project called Bordeaux Euratlantique, widely managed by the national government since it's an Opération d'Intérêt National (OIN, national interest project), obviously involving Spain very much too, hence maybe a bit of the European Union as well.

Of course locally, this is bringing some development opportunities to the city. It's now at the heart of their development strategy. Official site of the project:

Besides, and I don't think that's even related, they've been implementing a masterplan covering 370 acres over an area called Bassins à flots. I just counted roughly 30 projects over the area affected for now, mostly some housing. Yet another thing to get lost in. There's plenty of mock-ups and stuff in the Bordeaux subforum of the French urban planning site. I'll bring some later.

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psst... A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. (John 13:34)
I like bass. Give me some.

^ There will definitely be some delays. The sections to Toulouse and to Hendaye are on hold. There should be some announcements about that pretty soon, from that socialist government that everybody over here is plainly hating. The line to Toulouse is supposed to be upheld, so is the section to Dax, but further to Hendaye (which is certainly part of the line to Bilbao) might well be badly delayed.

As for the Paris-Bordeaux line, the section between Paris and Tours is yet an actual LGV. So a (pretty long) section between Tours and Bordeaux is currently upgraded.

That's what's up to the French side. They say that in spite of some budget cuts, the work is already on in the Spanish Basque Country.

This from Wiki seems actually up to date.

__________________
psst... A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. (John 13:34)
I like bass. Give me some.

My grandpas and grandmas came from all over the French-speaking country, including Switzerland to give birth to my mum and dad in Paris. I was born and have always lived here myself. That's enough. The genuine Republic is way larger than that. It will take the entire universe.

I love Bordeaux because to my knowledge, it appears the very first modern city of the whole Western world. Watch this as an observable example.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_de_la_Bourse_%28Bordeaux%29

This thing was built from 1730 to 1775.

This is why our English cousins call us "pompous" when they're short of arguments. They've never been sophisticated enough to build anything like this back then. It's sort of ridiculous indeed, bringing anything from the same era down to retarded barbarity, yet just a majestic entrance from the river bank to the sweet local stone downtown. That's Bordeaux, the Roman/Italian Renaissance projected to a larger and more dense scale. The model that inspired Haussmannian Paris, just a couple of stories taller some 100 years later.

Before that pathetic, self-centered Parisian microcosm that calls themselves an "elite", our philosophers and our novelists dreamt about heaven. And back then, Bordeaux was meant to be worldclass.
I want justice for all the French-speaking cities. Including those of Belgium and Switzerland.

__________________
psst... A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. (John 13:34)
I like bass. Give me some.

Bringing an overview of the first results of a masterplan called Ginko - or Berge du Lac due to it's location on a bank of the artificial lake they've built there a pretty long while ago, in a northern area of the city - that they're currently implementing. It covers roughly 70 acres of land, mostly residential and developed in the fashion of an "éco-quartier". That means it's entirely built in the contemporary codes of bioclimatic architecture, decidedly energy-efficient, thus supposedly environmentally friendly. Everything built throughout the country has to be bioclimatic nowadays anyway.

The masterplan is to build some 1500+ homes, a third of them being social housing, the rest for sale at market rate. In other words, the neighborhood implements the down ass strategy to not leave the working class stuck in nasty social ghettos, which is fine.

First, a pretty large lot called Canopée.

Looking closer at details, the older picture to the right let me realize that these buildings also show some walls cladded in white bricks.

From the other side of the lot. I think the smaller components in the wooden cladding are some sort of attached single-family homes.

Cool use of wood they made to these buildings. It kind of reminds of ski resorts in the Alps, that's pleasant. Though they were still working on it, the finishes already seemed properly done. Renderings of the interiors.

Well, prices are yet quite interesting in Bordeaux! It still allows you this comfy standard for €245 to 365k. These are prices I saw for some 4/5-room apartments. Mah, that is just unreal seen from Paris. I don't think that'll be forever over there. Got that feeling that the better deals are right now before the whole metro area gets overpriced.

Canopée's the most recognizable lot to me for now. They've yet built more, at least partially.

Below's along a little channel they dug in the neighborhood.

The grey building to the right is social housing. Don't like it, they could've done better.

Below belongs to a lot named after St Exupéry.

There's more of single-family with a darker wooden cladding.

To the other side of the little pedestrian path:

Still over/around St Exupéry.

Lot Elya facing Canopée with a garden in between, I think:

More wooden looking attached single-family.

Still a mess of construction all over the site. A few more views of the overall thing at random.

I think that's just about it for now. There's a lot more, a couple of subsequent phases to come. The resulting area will be served by the tram network. I'll be watching what they build.

All picures above by amart - thanks to him for his frequent updates in the Bordeaux subforum of pss-archi.eu, that's much appreciated - hosted on hostingpics.net.

Otherwise, they've hardly got the work started on Bassins à flot that I mentioned earlier. That's yet something else. 5000 homes, a 5 times larger area than that above. It won't be complete before 2025. Now if you ever went to Bordeaux, you might get a little bit further into wines as well as in bad French food, somehow. Bassins à flot located on the left bank of the Garonne river will be served by the new bridge seen at the beginning of this thread and will feature the centre culturel et touristique du vin (cultural and tourist center of wine), a museum to promote the best known trait of the local culture, history and economy. The wine industry.

Designed by X-Tu, a Parisian firm. They've just begun to build this thing last month.

__________________
psst... A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. (John 13:34)
I like bass. Give me some.

whenever i visit northern europe (including france), it makes me feel ashamed that i live in the usa and own an american mentality. it's enough to look at these photos and compare them with any planned community in north america to cast into relief how truly barbaric we are as a people. i feel like the american esprit is impossible to grasp without understanding how ugly our cities are and how little we care about the aesthetics of a place. it's appalling, truly appalling.